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Alumni and friends help UCL research healthier cities

28 October 2010

This year the kind contributions of UCL alumni and friends have
supported our academics as they undertake research into ‘Healthy Cities’. The
Healthy Cities project will consider how changing the built environment might
affect the health of its residents.

This ranges from examining community-led sanitation projects in
Mumbai to how social housing might affect mental health in London. The project
is cross-disciplinary and sees researchers from various departments at UCL
collaborating to produce innovative conclusions.

The funding from UCL alumni and friends has allowed three research
assistants to get involved in the project, all of whom are current UCL
students. These researchers provide essential support for the project, building
up case studies of where interventions have affected health outcomes around the
world.

Professor Yvonne Rydin, who is leading on ‘Healthy Cities’’,
commented; “This is an extremely exciting area for UCL to be involved in. We
are taking the expertise that exists across various UCL faculties and
departments, from the Bartlett School of Architecture to the Department of
Philosophy, and applying it to a common question. The money from alumni and
friends has allowed us to devote hundreds of hours to essential background
research. This project has the potential to transform public health agendas and
we are extremely grateful to UCL supporters for playing a part in
it.”

‘Healthy Cities’ will continue the collaboration between ‘The Lancet’
and UCL. In 2009 UCL and ‘The Lancet’ produced a report about managing the
health effects of climate change. This initiative was immensely successful and
led to the commissioning of briefing papers on the same subject by the
Commonwealth Secretariat. It is hoped that the ‘Healthy Cities’ project will
also achieve this level of impact.